I wanted to make this thread for people who may be on the fence on buying Halo 5 to help them make their decision. I’m going to talk about the facts first, what the game entails, the selling points, etc. After that I wanna give you my reasons for buying the game. You are not me but some of my reasons might resonate with you. You’re all free to have your own opinion on the game and it’s not a big deal if you don’t like the game! It’s perfectly fine.
So with Halo 5 you are getting a 4 player co-op campaign featuring the Master Chief and a new playable Spartan, a multiplayer mode called Warzone that’s kind of like Battlefield with lots of players with bases to capture and vehicles to use, a smaller 4v4 multiplayer mode called Arena where you fight for power weapons like Sniper Rifles and on smaller maps (which gets very competitive). Then you also get a mode called Breakout and it’s sort of like Counter-Strike or Search and Destroy in CoD if you’ve ever played those games before. You only get one life per round and you have lower health so you are going to die really fast! Best played with a team of friends, honestly. So those are the main modes. There will be stuff like Capture The Flag and whatnot so it’s not all just Deathmatch. Tons of variety to be had!
So that about covers the quick version of what’s in Halo 5. Now I want to get into more detail about why I care about Halo 5 and what makes this game worth it to me and hopefully, by extension, some of you. I want to give you my honest opinion on the game and the whole series.
Halo is a great series. The campaigns are always great. Playing as the Master Chief is so badass and the things you end up doing are really memorable. I can honestly say that the Halo campaigns are probably the best that you’ll find in an FPS these days. Nothing can compete with 4 player co-op on such a grand scale set in the huge universe that Halo provides. It’s just something you really don’t want to miss out on. The campaign itself is probably worth the price of admission itself. In Halo 5 you will play as 2 different squads of Spartans. One is Master Chief’s crew of brothers and sisters and the other is Locke’s new team which has been ordered to track down the Chief. Things are going to get interesting…
The multiplayer is phenomenal. There’s so many different offerings and each one of them truly works for Halo. One of my favorite things about Halo is discovered by trying to find out what this sentence means: “Lets play some Halo multiplayer.” Sounds like an easy sentence to figure out but when you really think about it, it isn’t. If someone asked you that question about Battlefield, you would jump in knowing that you’re probably going to end up playing Conquest mode. For CoD, you know that you’re probably getting into Team Deathmatch more than anything else. In Halo, it could mean two different and equally defining modes of the game. Big Team Battle (Warzone with Halo 5) and 4v4 Arena. Both of these modes can be used to define Halo. *"*What’s Halo multiplayer all about? It’s all about driving around a Warthog as much as it is about playing on a map that has no vehicles at all. Halo is beautiful and amazing in the fact that it’s so many different things and still awesome at all of them. Breakout is another big mode that will add to this as another definitive game mode. Custom games allow you and your friends to make you own gametypes and you can even make your own maps!
There will be games that offer a deeper single-player experience or bigger maps with 64 players but that’s all that they will do. Star Wars: Battlefront is going to be very good at one thing and one thing only: Offering a massive battlefield experience. There is no Campaign and any “Arena” mode in that game will fall severely short of Halo 5’s take on Arena.
Fallout 4 will offer an amazing single-player experience and that’s it. Wanna play with your friends? Or even just anyone online? Guess you won’t be playing Fallout 4 for a bit. Halo 5 offers a massive 4 player Campaign, large-scale warfare with 12v12 and a smaller, balanced, extremely competitive 4v4 mode with a ranking system that shows the player’s skill.
With Halo 5, you get a bit of everything and it doesn’t compromise the game at all.
What I absolutely love about Halo is that you have energy shields which let you take more damage before you die. You die slower than in other shooters and this allows for some awesome gameplay. You can turn the tide of a battle by luring an enemy and then grenading him and in Halo 5 you can use your thrusters to try and juke your opponent. You’re not just dead once someone see’s you. Your life is very much in your control at all times. Death will come when you are outplayed, not from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a fair game. It’s player skill and teamwork that brings your team to victory. In Halo 5, as opposed to other games, you can see exactly how much shields you have, how much health you have for after your shields are gone and exactly how long it will take for them both to recover. It’s not a guessing game to find out how close you are to dying or recovering health, it’s very clear and makes the game less stressful as opposed to your screen just filling up with red until you die.
You are going to see familiar mechanics from other games but the game is not going to play like those other games. It’s going to take some getting used to, especially not getting your shields back when you’re sprinting. But if you can get past the learning curve then I know that you’ll start to love Halo’s gameplay more than the other shooters out there. It’s just a better experience, in my opinion. There’s no cheap deaths from some guy camping in a bush with a silencer on his gun. There’s no gunship so high in the sky that you can’t even shoot it while it rains hell down on your team. There’s a rule to Halo: Everything must be earned either through teamwork or raw talent and once you’ve earned it, you’ve still gotta prove that you have what it takes to use your newfound reward to devastating effect. The Banshee that you earned in Warzone isn’t a free ticket to a Killionare. That Sniper Rifle might be in your hands now after a well-fought battle but it will all have been for nothing if you can’t perform with it.
Simply put, if you want a game that’s surprisingly good at all things, try out Halo 5. If you want a game with an actual ranking system with completely balanced gameplay, it’s the game to get this year. Halo 5 is the most diverse shooter this year and all of its offerings are high in quality. Free maps help seal the deal. While there’s no guarantee that you’ll love Halo 5 to death, I can assure you that you won’t regret spending $60 on it if you enjoy First-person shooters. You will find something in it that’s worth playing, even if it’s just the Campaign.
